First off late me make it clear I am not talking about any sectarian religious or new age angle to this question.
This question is highly unique and I hope someone can provide an answer. Throughout the ages, divination and prophecy have been commonplace. I am not commenting or strictly asking whether or not the divine or supernatural exists. Ancient Israel, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Europe, Asia, etc, all these regions and cultures practice divination, prophecy or both, irrespective to their theological inclinations. Is there any indication, even if the supernatural does really exist, that prophecy and/or divination actually provides some kind of insight. Does it actually work, even a very modest way? These things were legitimate sciences in ancient cultures, but is there evidence that these practices produced real actual results in some way. Did these societies reap even very modest benefits from attempts to contact or read messages from the divine?
I know of no evidence that indicated divination resulted in valid results. But it is important to recognize that when asking for a sense of direction - and then receiving it presumably from the supernatural - one can proceed with considerable confidence, and that may affect the outcome.
The following is from my Introduction to Folklore, which I adapted from my mentor Sven Liljeblad (1899-2000). Perhaps the excerpt will be of use to you:
Liljeblad defined divination “as the art of determining the unknown by supernatural means, whether this concerns future events or occurrences, which are distinct in space.” He further identifies three ways that such knowledge could be obtained: 1. A gifted person acquires knowledge through ecstasy, a spiritual moment of insight; 2. Dreams or visions can also grant knowledge about the future or of far off places; and finally, 3. Through training or gifted insight, a person is able to read natural occurrences as indicative of the future or distant events.
Ecstatic or shamanistic divination: With this means of divination, someone intentionally brings on a trance to communicate with the supernatural world. The shaman typically deals with a friendly spirit who may be a guardian, or a spirit speaks through the shaman. Many arctic people such as the Lapps, the Tungus, the Mongols, the Inuit, and some American Indians, maintain the tradition of a spirit speaking through a shaman by means of ecstasy. Icelandic sagas describe this approach to divination, always attributing the skill to women. This sort of divination did not survive Christianization in Europe.
Dreams and Visions: Before industrialization, Europeans commonly practiced divination through acquired visions and dreams. Someone wanting a vision would avoid eating and talking to separate themselves from the human world. The person would then go to places such as crossroads or cemeteries the night before an important holiday, for a chance to communicate with the supernatural world. People also stared into a shiny object – a crystal, a lustrous stone, a mirror, a polished piece of metal, or a liquid – until they saw visions. Those who claimed special skills or gifts to predict the future with these means occasionally practiced divination as a profession. Often, however, vision seeking was the domain of non-professionals who simply wished to gain insight into the future or distant events. For example, an unmarried girl in Scandinavia would look into the newly-brewed Christmas beer with a lighted candle to see her future husband.
European peasants also regarded dreams as important elements of divination. Elaborate means to interpret dreams are characteristic of folklore and have been one of the most resilient forms of tradition in the face of industrialization and the post-modern world.
Interpretation of natural events: Many people regard various natural phenomena as indicators of future events. The flight of birds, the internal organs of animals, the appearance of the new moon at the beginning of a season, the movement of smoke from a fire, or any number of other things could be used to predict the future. The Roman science of augury took this form of divination to an extreme, but the folk have always sought signs from nature to indicate the future.
Interpretations of events in the world are often opportunistic in that someone divining the future may see significance in odd occurrences, without particular significance identified in the local folklore. Other subjects of divination are clearly defined by oral tradition. The Irish and some places in Britain, for example, regard the number of magpies first seen in the morning as an indication of how the day will proceed. The Irish have a rhyme, which has been recorded with several variations, that recites the possibilities: “one for sorrow, two for joy,” and so on for indications of everything from luck to poor business dealings. Cornish-born historian A. L. Rowse (1903-1997) recorded the rhyme as “one for sorrow, two for mirth; three for a wedding, four for a birth.” The selection of the magpie for this special role is no accident. The name magpie was originally “Morgana’s Pie,” a reference to the powerful female deity who was the basis of the Arthurian character Morgan le Fey. The magpie was a sacred bird for the goddess, and so its appearance in a variety of numbers could originally be taken as a predication of the future from the goddess. The Irish have forgotten the pagan associations of the magpie as a means of divining the future. Nevertheless, they turn to the bird, a choice with deep roots in folklore.
hi! if you don't get answers here (or even if you do) it might be worth x-posting this question to /r/AskAnthropology, and perhaps /r/AskSocialScience